"It's no more than I expected, doctor," said my patient, Goodsell, a
stern, hard-featured, grey-haired man, with keen, yet good-natured eyes;
and he shifted his head a little on the pillow to look at me. "Good job
it's no worse, ain't it?"
"It is a mercy you were not killed," I said.
"You're right, doctor," he replied, smiling. "Two inches to the left,
and the iron rim of the bucket would have broken my skull instead of my
shoulder, eh? and then my boy could have carried on the business."
"You take it very philosophically," I said.
"To be sure, doctor. Why not? A man must die some time; and he may
just as well die at work, as a miserable creature in bed. I expects to
die by my business, straightforward and honourable. The pitcher that
goes oftenest to the well is sure to be broken at last," he added, with
a laugh. "I'm a pitcher always going to the well, and shall be broken
at last.
"I've been a well-sinker ever since I was quite a lad; my father was a
well-sinker afore me, and he got sent to sleep with the foul air at the
bottom of a well, and never got waked again; and I, being the eldest of
six, and only fourteen, had to set at it to keep the family, while
father's master, being a kind-hearted sort of man, took me on, and gave
me as good wages as he could, for my father had been a sort of favourite
of his, from being a first-class, steady workman. My grandfather was a
well-sinker too, and he got buried alive, he did, poor old chap, through
a fall of earth; while his father--my great-grandfather, you know--was
knocked on the head by the sinker's bucket; for the rope broke when they
were drawing it up full of earth, and it fell on the old gentleman, and
ended him. I ain't got killed yet, I ain't; but my turn'll come some
day, I suppose, for it's in our profession, you know. But then you must
have water; and ours is a very valuable trade--so what is to be will be,
and what's the good of fretting? It don't do to be always fidgeting
about danger in your way through life, but what we have to do is to go
straight ahead, and do our duty, and trust to Providence for the rest.
"Now, after all these years--and I'm 'most fifty, you know--I never look
down a well without having the creeps, and I never go down one without
having the creeps; for they're queer, dark, echoing, shadowy, grave-like
sort of holes, and one thinks of the depth, and the darkness, and the
water, and of how little chance there is of escape, and so on, if one
fell; and perhaps this is a bit owing to one or two narrow escapes I've
had, and them making me a bit nervous. Soon as I get right to work I
forget all the fidgeting, but the first starting is certainly rather
nervous work for me, though I don't believe as I ever told any one of it
before.
"That well down at Rowborough need to be like a nightmare to me, and
laid heavier upon me than any, well ever did before; but I kept on to my
work like the rest, and we gradually went on lower and lower, step after
step, month after month, always expecting to strike a main-spring, but
never succeeding. Now it was loamy earth, then yellow clay, then
gravel, then blue clay, then more gravel, then sand for far enough, then
flinty soil, and then chalk, and so on month after month; but never any
water worth speaking about. Of course we struck water times enough, and
it bothered us a good deal to stop it out, but it was only from little
upper springs, while what we wanted was the deep spring from far below--
one that, when we tapped it, should come up strongly and give a good
supply of water for the deep well.
"We were years digging that well--years; for money being in plenty, and
them wanting a good supply of water, our orders were to keep on, and we
did dig--down, down a good six hundred feet; and, mind you, the farther
you get from the surface the slower the work gets on, on account of the
time taken in sending the stuff up. Now, when I talk of six hundred
feet, you mustn't suppose I mean a bored well, quite a little hole,
perhaps six inches across, but one dug all the way, and a good nine foot
in diameter.
"That was a fine well--is a fine well, I may say--with one of the best
supplies of clear soft water in this country, and that too in a place
where good water is terribly scarce. Our firm had the job; and I was
one of the men put on at the beginning, and I was on it till it was
finished.
"We did not go straight down all the way, but when we got down to the
chalk made a sort of chamber, and cut out sideways for a bit, and then
began digging down again another shaft, this making it more convenient
for the drawing up of the rubbish dug out; every scrap of which had, of
course, to be taken to the surface.
"You perhaps hardly think of what it is being lowered down five hundred
feet in a bucket, and then working by the light of a lantern in the
bottom of the pit, whose walls you have to take care shall be carefully
bricked up as you go on down, for fear they should fall in upon you. It
is that hot you can hardly bear it, for very little fresh air comes down
there; while, if it was not for smothering the thoughts, one might
always be in dread of an accident. Now here, instead of feeling afraid
of an incoming of the water, what we were most afraid of was that we
should never get any water at all; and after all the labour bestowed on
the place, it seemed quite disheartening to strike upon nothing but
beggarly little rills worth nothing. But our governor was a George
Stephenson sort of a man, and he had taken it into his head that we must
get to water sooner or later, and he used to say that when we did strike
it there would be plenty. So we dug on, slowly and surely, day after
day, month after month, till some of the men got scared of the job on
account of the depth, and left it. We had had no accidents, though, for
everything had been worked out carefully and quietly, and though this
was an underground place, every part was finished as carefully and truly
as if it had been in full light of the sun.
"Last of all, we'd got down a good six hundred feet, while, according to
appearances, it seemed that we might go on a good six hundred more
before we got to water; while in my case it seemed to be now part of my
regular life to go down there, day after day, to work my spell, and I
used to dig and lay bricks, dig and lay bricks, without thinking about
water, or when it was coming, though the governor used to warn us to be
careful in case when it did come it should come very fast.
"We did most part of our work by buckets and windlass; but, all the
same, we had stagings and ladders down to the bottom, ever so many feet;
and one day when I was down with a mate--only us two right at the
bottom, though, of course, there were others at the stages and top--I
was digging away and filling the bucket, giving the signal and sending
it up, when I got looking at the course of bricks my mate was laying,
and, as you will see, bricklayers in wells lay their bricks one under
the other, and not one on the top of another like they would in building
a house.
"All at once he says to me, `Just shovel this gravel away again; there
ain't room to get a brick under.'
"`There was plenty of room just now,' I says, `for I took notice. The
bricks give a little from up above.'
"Well, he thought so too, and went on with his work, while I went on
with mine, picking and shovelling up the loose gravel and putting it in
the bucket; but, though I worked pretty hard, I seemed to make no way;
and, instead of him being able to go on and lay another course of
bricks, he had to take a shovel and help me.
"`It's rum, ain't it?' he says, after we'd been digging hard for about
an hour. `Something's wrong; or else the place is bewitched. Here we
haven't sunk an inch this last hour, I'll swear, though we've sent up no
end of bucketfuls. There's the last course of bricks just where it was,
and I'm blest if I don't think it's sunk a bit in!'
"`Well, it does look like it,' I said, `certainly; and I 'spose the
brickwork's giving a bit from the tremendous weight up above. You've
been working too hard, Tom,' I says, laughing, `and your work hasn't had
time to set.'
"`Well, I've only kept up with you,' he says, quite serious; `but I
'spose it's as you say, and we'll take it a bit easier, for this is
labour in vain.'
"It really looked so, for after another hour we seemed to be just where
we were before, and I began almost to think it very likely something
really was wrong, but what I couldn't tell. This was something new to
me, for I had never been in so deep a well before, and I felt puzzled.
It seemed no use to dig, for we got no lower; and once I really thought
that instead of our getting any deeper, we were making the well
shallower; but the next moment I laughed at this stupid thought, and
filled and started the bucket, when, dinner-time being come, we laid
down our tools, and made our way up to daylight; but before I started, I
could not help feeling more puzzled than ever, for now, on one side,
there was the bottom course of bricks quite below the loose gravel and
sand.
"I didn't say anything to my mate, and, truth to tell, I forgot all
about it the next moment, for I was thinking of dinner; and I didn't
recollect it again until after two, when we were nearly at the bottom,
when it came back with a flash, and I then seemed to see the cause of it
all.
"I was at the bottom, and Tom above me, and we were just below the last
staging, when I heard a strange roaring, rumbling noise that turned my
very blood cold; for it seemed to me then, as I stood on, the rounds of
that bottom ladder, that a wild beast was breaking loose, and about to
tear at me and drag me off the rungs, and for a few seconds I couldn't
speak or move, till Tom sings out:
"`Hallo! what's up?' and that seemed to give me breath.
"`Up, up!' I shouted; `the water!' and he started climbing again as
hard as he could, and me panting and snorting after him, for, with a
tremendous bubbling, roaring rush, the water, that had been forcing the
earth slowly upwards for hours past, had now pushed its way through, and
as we reached the second stage, we heard the one below us regularly
burst up, and saw the ladder we had just left sink down.
"Heard in that hollow, echoing well, hundreds of feet from the surface,
and under such circumstances, the roar of the water was something awful
to listen to. We could not see it, but it was coming up seething and
bubbling like a fountain, while the pressure beneath must have been
something fearful.
"As we got higher our progress was slower, for the men on the upper
stages were before us; and though they had taken the alarm from our
shouts and the bellowing of the water, they did not travel so fast as we
did. Stage after stage was forced up, and ladder after ladder sunk down
as we got higher, and never did I feel such a relief as when we stood in
the chamber cut out of the chalk, where we could look up and see the
little ring of daylight far above us; and then, half a dozen men as we
were, we clung to the bucket and rope, and gave the signal for them to
wind up, the water leaping round our feet as we slowly rose.
"As it happened it was a new and a strong rope, or it must have given
way with the tremendous strain put upon it, and I shivered again and
again as we swung backwards and forwards, while my only wonder now is
that some of us did not fall back from sheer fright.
"But we reached the surface safely, with the water bubbling and running
after us nearly the whole way, for it rose to within fifty feet of the
top, and has stayed at that height ever since; but though one man
fainted, and we all looked white and scared, no one was hurt. Ah! it
was the narrowest escape I ever had.
"Our tools we lost, of course, but a great deal of the woodwork and many
of the short ladders floated up, and were brought out. It would take a
good deal to make me forget the well that grew shallower the more we
shovelled out the gravel. For a supply of water no town can be better
off than Rowborough; and then, look at the depth--six hundred feet!"
Poor old Goodsell had a hard time of it, and suffered great pain before
I got his shoulder well, and even then he never was able to carry on his
occupation as of old. For it was a terrible accident, the rope
breaking, and a bucket used in drawing up the earth from a well falling
upon his shoulder; and, as he said, a couple of inches more to the left,
and he would have been killed.